Each year in the communications and information technology industries, more equipment is arranged to be housed in rackmount enclosures. Equipment housed in these rackmount enclosures produces heat, in large part due to the number of transistors in this equipment. Moore's Law regarding transistors has held true since Intel® chairman Gordon Moore first proposed this law in 1965: the number of transistors on a micro chip will double every 18 months. The number of transistors is proportional to the thermal load each chip produces, and these chips are prevalent in rack-mounted equipment. Furthermore, operational system advances have allowed more chips to be used in multiprocessing applications, making each server produce even more heat. Thus, technological advances in chip design result in more heat being produced than in prior rack-mounted devices. Heat is undesirable as it affects performance and reliability of the rack-mounted components, e.g., including causing complete failures, and affects the useful life of the components. Often, the heat produced by the rack-mounted components is not evenly distributed in the rack. Unevenly distributed loads in the rack result in uneven heat production, or “hot spots.”